The tent was in good shape. Nothing torn nor neglected despite the time spent on the road. Someone had taken care to keep it that way. The cot was made, the satchel at it's foot still latched, a folded cloak on the stool beside it, and a pair of brown leather boots beside it. Only the armour stand was empty, and the sword that should have been beside the bed was missing.I knew where everything was before I reached for it.
My hands didn't wander—they remembered. The knowledge wasn't mine, but it guided me all the same. These habits were stitched into my head now, quiet and efficient. I approached the small satchel that lay at the foot of the sleeping cot. Inside were some papers, a flask, and beneath it all, folded clean, were his clothes.
Black and red. Heavy fabric, fine stitching. A noble's wardrobe. I knew they were considered quiet stylish by the standards of the people here, but to me they felt outdated, out of place like I was Cosplaying. I stared at them for a while before sighing.
"Better than walking around bare ass naked," I muttered. I dressed slowly. The shirt fit a little tight at the shoulders; the trousers, a little loose and the boots a bit too snug.
The coat, though—richly dyed, neatly embroidered—fit almost perfectly. The fabric was a fine black velvet lined with silver thread and edged in deep red.
The sort of thing a noble might wear in leisure, comfortable but expensive enough to remind everyone it wasn't meant for common use.
I caught my reflection in a polished bronze plate by the bed: pale skin glittering faintly where sunlight cut through the canvas, veins smooth and colorless beneath the surface. I looked like someone had dragged a ghost out of a noblemans wardrobe.
A handsome ghost at least.
It was strange, how normal this felt. Three men dead outside, and here I was getting dressed like I had somewhere to be. What bothered me wasn't the killing. It was how little of me truly cared about it.
The weight in my chest came not from what I'd done, but from knowing I didn't feel enough about it. The rest of the guilt was mostly borrowed—his, not mine.
Louis' grief pressed at the back of my skull, dull and insistent. The ache wasn't mine, but it tried to be. His sorrow for his failure, hummed under my own thoughts like a second heartbeat.I could feel him grieving in the back of my head.
For his friends. For failing them. The emotion wasn't deep as it had been mere minutes before, but it was something.
It wasn't as sharp as before, more a fading pulse than a wound, but still there. I felt that it was easier to dismiss it now, but I didn't.
I didn't fight it. I didn't feel I had the right to.
As irritating as it currently was I knew I would miss this feeling when it faded. At least when Louis grieved, I could pretend I still had something human left.
It seems quieter now at, appeased. Maybe sparing Milton had softened it. Maybe that's what it took to quiet them—doing something that lined up with what they'd want.
The idea made my head throb. Was that what this was going to be now? Appeasing ghosts just to keep them from tormenting me?
I could try to abstain from human blood, I supposed. Play at restraint, pretend to be noble about it.
But even as the notion crossed my mind, I immediately dismissed it. I wasn't like the Cullens and I sure as hell wasn't like Regis. I didn't have that kind of strength or delusion.
I was human a day ago, and already the taste of blood had burned every thought of restraint out of me.
The moment that first drop of human blood had touched my tongue, I'd known there was no going back. It hadn't just been taste, it was transcendence.
Every heartbeat had poured into me, hot and electric, flooding every vein with light and sound. The air had shimmered. The forest had pulsed with me. It was clarity so pure it bordered on divinity, a joy that made every other human pleasure feel like dust.
All those thoughts I'd had about ending it—about dying to protect humanity from the monster I'd become—vanished in an instant. The idea seemed laughable now, absurd in the face of that kind of rapture.
No one would throw away something so exquisite. Not willingly. The best I could do, I supposed, would be to get selective. Picky about who I killed. Not just for the sake of what was left of my morality but for my sanity too.
Look at me not even a day and I'm already drooling at the mouth.
Finished with my introspection, I decided I'd stalled long enough, it was time to face the last living soul in this graveyard of a camp. The flap of the tent gave a soft whump as I pushed it aside, the sunlight spilling in after me. The clearing was just as I'd left it moments before, except for one exception.
The girl was not by the tree stump, the chain connecting her iron shackles to the tree stump was pulled taught as she was near hunched over, tearing into the boar on the spit.
I guess pride doesn't matter much to dead men, or maybe she just didn't want to die hungry. I couldn't help but sardonically think to myself. The sound I made opening the tent must've startled her because she froze mid-bite, a gouged out piece of half-burnt boar still in her hand.
For a moment she just stared, wide-eyed and tense, like a cornered animal in front a predator.
Up close like this, she looked worse than I'd thought. Her hair, once fine and carefully kept, hung in uneven tangles around her face. Her skin was drawn tight over her cheekbones, pale beneath the grime, lips cracked and raw from thirst.
The bones of her wrists and collar stood out sharp against the too-large rags that clung to her frame.
Nothing in her now hinted at the woman I knew she would become two decades from now, there was no trace of the vengeful, calculating Syanna from the game or even the cruel princess I'd glimpsed through my stolen memories.
Though I suppose that way of thinking was unfair to her, I only knew her either through the lens of fiction or a through the mind of a man full of prejudice against her, here and now, I supposed it only fair to treat her as though I knew nothing of her, not as a child prophesied to bring ruin, not as a scorned manipulator that would use even a deadly monster to exact retribution on those who wronged her, but simply as she was, a starving girl lost in the woods.
Seeing as she still had not moved, frozen in fear, I decided to try and calm her. "Relax." She flinched at the sound of my voice—my voice, not Louis's—though the accent still clung to it. I kept going. "Trust me. I'm not going to hurt you and I'm the last person who'd judge you for letting hunger get the better of you."
At the mention of food her eyes flicked to de la Croix's corpse, then to Ramon du Lac and Vladimir Crespi. I winced. I really should do something about the bodies. From Louis's memories I knew the rules: unless I moved camp, I'd need to bury them deep or burn them, or they'd attract ghouls.
She looked back at me. "Trust you?" she eventually asked Her voice was soft but sharp at the edges, the lilting Toussaint accent turning the words into something that might've sounded polite if not for the fear beneath them. I guess she hasn't lost it yet
I gave a small shrug. "Well, I've already had my fill, if that helps my case."
Her eyes narrowed, suspicion flickering across her face as though she couldn't quite tell if I was joking. The silence between us stretched. She didn't move, didn't drop her guard. I couldn't really blame her—she'd just watched me tear through three armed men like paper.
"I know what you are." She accuses, "Only one creature laps at a mans blood, you're a vampire."
Well that didn't take all that long for her to figure out.
Given the scene around us, though I couldn't exactly fault her for putting the pieces together. The clearing was a picture of quiet devastation. De la Croix lay crumpled on the other side of the fire, throat torn open where his life had been drained away. The other two—Ramon du Lac and Vladimir Crespi—had met quicker ends.
Their necks hung at wrong angles, twisted with the kind of brutal efficiency that left no question as to what kind of strength had done it. The air still carried that faint, metallic tang of blood, thick enough to almost taste.
I tilted my head slightly, more amused than offended. "Creature's a bit harsh, don't you think? I did save you after all."
That earned me nothing but a glare. Her knuckles whitened around the chunk of meat she still held, the tremor in her hand betrayed her. She was terrified, trying desperately not to show it.
"You're technically not wrong though," I admitted after a moment, trying to keep the conversation from stalling. "I am a vampire." At that confirmation, her already thundering heart-rate spiked in fear.
Her eyes flicked to the faint shimmer of my skin where the sunlight touched it, then back to my face. "You don't burn," she said, almost accusingly, as though even that defied the natural order of things.
"No," I said simply. "Bit of false advertising on that front, from what I understand most of a vampires so called weaknesses are myths." Her eyes narrowed, studying me like she was testing that claim. "So the sun, holy water, silver, none of it?"
"Very subtle. I sighed shaking my head. "As I'm sure you can tell, the only thing sunlight does is make me an eye hazard; its useless, holy water's just water, and silver…" I walked towards where I had tossed down the crumpled silver goblet and picked it back up, "that actually usually works on most vampires."
She frowned at that, her eyes flicking briefly to the dented bit of metal glinting faintly in my hand. "Most vampires?" she echoed, cautious. "And you're not like them, I take it?" I tossed it back to the floor and dusted my hands.
"Well I can promise you I'm the only one that glows like this at least." I answered as I walked back towards my starting point, careful not to startle her, as I sat on the stump her chain was staked into, grabbing it, and snapping it like it was string. She stumbled a bit at the sudden slack.
The show of strength must have startled her or it simply reminded her of the danger I posed. Either way, she went silent again, shoulders tense, eyes fixed on me like a cornered animal waiting for the next move.
I sighed, more out of frustration with myself than her. The silence stretched, thick and uncomfortable. I knew, rationally, that I had no right to expect anything else. She'd been starved, beaten, and paraded across the continent for nearly a month. And then, when freedom finally came, it was handed to her by a creature that had torn through her captors like parchment.
She had every reason to fear me.
Still, a flicker of irritation crept in—a selfish one. It was easier to deal with anger than with the wary, silent dread in her eyes.
I reminded myself that the fact she'd spoken to me at all, even a single word, was remarkable. Courage came in strange forms, and I doubted I'd have shown half as much in her place, not at her age.
I leaned forward slightly, resting my elbows on my knees. The chain links clinked faintly between my fingers where I'd snapped them, a sharp sound in the quiet. Her gaze followed the motion, nervous, calculating. She didn't flinch this time, though. That was something.
"You can leave, if you want, the road out is that way." I said gesturing east, my tone came out gentler than I expected, almost careful. "No one's going to stop you."
She didn't move. Her fingers twitched around the half-eaten meat, but her eyes stayed on me, wary and untrusting. I could practically see the thoughts behind them: What kind of trap is this? What does he want?
I huffed out a breath, looking off toward the trees. The forest was still, heavy with the copper tang of blood. "You won't get far before nightfall even on horseback," I continued, "and the road's worse than it looks. Monsters, bandits, witch hunters if you're really unlucky." I met her eyes again. "I'm not saying stay. I'm saying—don't die pointlessly."
"And why do you care whether I live or die, trying to savor you meal, fatten me up?" Her tone was scathing, but the quiver beneath it betrayed her fear. I couldn't even blame her for it—she'd seen what I could do. Still, something in the barb stung, maybe because it wasn't entirely undeserved.
I let out a quiet, humorless laugh. "If I were fattening you up, I'd have left you to stuff your face, not set you loose." I answered whilst gesturing to food she still had in her hand.
She didn't reply, just watched me, eyes sharp and uncertain, like she was waiting for the catch.
I leaned back a little, giving her space. "Believe it or not, I'm not in the habit of keeping people for later. and like I said I've had my fill for a while."
Her brow creased. "You expect me to believe that?"
"Not really," I admitted with a faint shrug. "But it's still true."
Her jaw tightened, a spark of frustration breaking through the fear. "You still haven't answered me," she said, sharper this time. "Why am I still alive?"
For a moment, I said nothing. The question lingered between us, heavier than it had any right to be. Finally, I exhaled and leaned back slightly, elbows on my knees.
"The truth isn't something you'll like," I said. "And I'm not going to dress it up to make it sound noble. There's no secret motive, no grand design. I'm not keeping you around for leverage, or because I need you for something. And I'm not," I added dryly, "some demon trying to tempt you into damnation."
Her frown deepened, but she didn't interrupt.
"The truth," I went on, "is far less dramatic. I spared you because I pitied you. Not out of mercy or moral superiority—don't mistake it for that. I just looked at you—half-starved, terrified, chained up like an animal—and I couldn't bring myself to add one more cruelty to a life that's already been nothing but."
.
The words hung there between us, heavier than I'd meant them to be. Her expression shifted—first disbelief, then anger, and beneath that, something sharper, more wounded.
I could almost see the thought forming in her mind 'Who are you to pity me' the insult of it, the humiliation. Still a princess even underneath all the muck.
"I know that's probably the last thing you want to hear," I finished quietly. "A proud girl like you doesn't want pity. But that's the truth, whether you appreciate it or not."
"Pity," she said finally, her voice low but cutting, the accent curling around the word like a blade. "Like I am some stray dog?"
I didn't look away. "Yes."
Her jaw tightened, eyes flashing, and for a heartbeat I thought she might throw the half-eaten boar at me—or the nearest rock. But she didn't. She just held my gaze, trembling faintly from anger.
The silence stretched between us, broken only by the low hum of the forest. The noon sun hung high, its light filtering through the canopy in scattered patches of gold that danced across the ground.
Dust and ash drifted lazily through the air, catching the light as they fell. It was warm—too warm for the stench that clung to the clearing.
Beneath the scent of pine and earth lay the heavy, iron tang of blood and the faint sourness of burnt flesh, carried on the breeze like an unwelcome memory.
The camp felt hollow now, stripped of purpose. The firepit still smoldered weakly, sending up a thin ribbon of smoke that carried the greasy smell of overcooked meat. The knights' armor caught the light where it lay scattered, gleaming dully against the dirt.
Their horses lingered near the edge of the clearing, shifting restlessly, ears flicking at every sound, their unease bleeding into the air.
Somewhere deeper in the woods, a cicada droned, then went quiet, replaced by the rough cry of a crow. After that, nothing—just stillness, heavy and expectant.
I could hear her heart, beating shallow but steadier than before. Her pulse had slowed, though it still thrummed in the air between us like a warning. Her gaze flicking once toward the horses before finding me again—measuring, uncertain, but no longer frozen.
Her eyes flicked over me again, the way one might study the edge of a knife, testing where it was sharpest, where it might cut. I could tell she was weighing her options, searching for some advantage, some sense of control in a situation where she had none.
She shifted her weight, slow and deliberate, setting the chunk of boar down on the dirt beside her. The chain still hung from her wrist, a dead weight now, but she didn't seem to notice.
She probed one last time, quiet but steady, "And I'm supposed to trust a monster's pity?" I smiled faintly, not showing teeth this time. "No. You're supposed to trust your instincts. If I wanted you dead, you'd already be bleeding out beside them."
Her gaze lingered on me, searching for any hint of deceit. Whatever she found—or didn't—seemed enough for the moment. She exhaled shakily, eyes flicking toward the half-burnt boar again.
"So what now?" she asked finally. Her tone was wary. "You freed me. Said your piece. What do you want me to do—thank you?"
I huffed a dry breath through my nose, half amusement, half fatigue. "Wouldn't say no to that," I said, leaning forward, elbows on my knees. "But I'm not expecting it."
She shifted again, eyes darting toward the treeline where the light fractured through the leaves. "You said the road's that way," she murmured. "And if I leave now?"
I followed her gaze, the faintest stir of wind carrying the smell of ash and iron from the bodies behind us. "Like I said you'll make it a mile, maybe two, before something catches your scent. There's no parade of knights to scare them off, I'd be surprised if you make it to nightfall."
She swallowed hard, gaze flicking down to her hands. The faint tremor there betrayed her, though she tried to hide it.
"So I'm a prisoner again," she said quietly.
I shook my head. "No chains this time. Just common sense. Look—" I pushed myself up from the stump. "We're talking in circles. I have to get rid of those bodies before they attract corpse-feeders. You can either be here or not when I get back. Your choice, girl. There's a change of clothes in Crespi's tent. It won't fit perfect, but it's the closest to your size."
She watched me, eyes dark and wary. I left the stump and stepped toward the fallen men.
They barely weighed anything. I looped my arms under de la Croix's shoulders and he lifted like a sack of linen. No strain, no pause just the same automatic motion my hands remembered. I placed him near the others first, as scummy as it felt I needed to loot the bodies.
Their armor came off easy. Plates unbuckled, straps gave, mail slipped free like it was made for unmaking. I worked quick—belt, pouches, any coin or trinket worth keeping. The steel clinked as I stacked pieces by the fire: pauldrons, greaves, gauntlets.
I wiped their swords clean, checking the blades for damage, then slung the gear into saddlebags and the corpses onto the backs of the horses, they shifted under the added weight but stood. They'd been kept for riding, not for funerals; they tolerated both.
As I tightened the last knot I heard her call out, voice small but sharp.
"Rhenawedd."
I didn't look over my shoulder right away. "What?"
"My name is Rhenawedd," she called again, louder. "If you're going to treat me like some stray dog you picked up, you could at least call me by my name."
There was pride in the way she said it, the way she forced elegance into a voice worn thin. I allowed a faint smile. The name fit her better than the rags did, and the lie was harmless.
"Matthias," I answered As I swung unto the saddle with stolen ease and gave the horses a nudge, to lead them into the treeline. Two mounts carried a total of three cold bundles at their backs, bound and stripped of everything useful.